Synopses & Reviews
REPRESENTATIVE SELECTIONS, WITH INTRODUCTION, BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND NOTES BY CLARA MARBURG KIRK formerly of Vassar College AND RUDOLF KIRK Professor of English Rutszzs AWS AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY New York Cincinnati Chicago Boston Atlanta Dallas San Francisco Portrait by K. Staudenbaur, Jrom Harpers Weekly June 19 1886 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 49 PREFACE Howells is known today as a novelist. But he began and ended his literary career as a journalist, and, though his novels appeared almost every year, and frequently twice a year, from 1872 to 1921, he managed to write half a dozen autobiograph ical studies, four volumes of poetry, over thirty plays, a dozen or more travel books, uncounted memoirs, biographies, and reviews. The introductory critical study in this volume at tempts to relate Howells 1 multifarious literary expression to his work as a novelist. Since practically all of Howells writing is ultimately autobiographical, our study must be biographical in order to be properly critical. To choose representative selections from more than a hundred bound volumes of Howells works, not to mention the uncollected reviews, stories, and essays in magazines, might well baffle the boldest editor, especially since Howells writing maintained a uniformly high standard. We have attempted to solve the problem by keeping in mind the fact that Howells should be studied first of all as a novelist. What selections we have chosen from his memoirs and his critical essays are designed to throw light on his attitude toward realism as a technique, and his use of his own experience in novel writing. We have included two narrative poems and one play from his many comedies as examples of Howells search for his novelform. The novels from which we have chosen selections are discussed at length in our Introduction, for, since Howells was essentially an auto biographical novelist, they are only to be understood against the background of his life. Indian Summer, for instance, is to be read as a reflection of Howells stay in Italy in 1882 and as the culmination of a series of Italian novels in which Howells made vii Vlll Preface use of his enriching European experiences Annie Kilburn not only reflects Howells fine sense of New England small-town life, but also shows the effect of his reading of Tolstoy on his awakening social conscience, which had become articulate in A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham and reached its strongest expression in A Hazard of New Fortunes. Howells concern for society, clearly set forth in A Traveler from Altruria, for a time interrupted his novel writing. If space permitted, we should like to include selections from his later novels, such as The Kentons and The Vacation of the Kelwyns, to show that he at last gave up the social novel, convinced that the phenomena of our enormous enterprise ... is the stuff for newspapers, but not for the novel, except as such wonders of the outer world can be related to the miracles of the inner world. The excerpts from Howells critical comments indicate why he ventured into the wider social fields, and why he returned to more restrained literary expression. The chapters from Years of My Youth and Literary Friends and Acquaintance are chosen to help the reader understand both the surroundings in which Howells grew up in Ohio and the early associations he formed in Boston and New York. Only from his basis can one appraise hiscritical position as a writer of realistic novels. The selections in this volume are arranged, therefore, not in order of publication, but in a sequence which will show the development of Howells the novelist. The reader will find few notes to the individual selec tions, since all the relevant material is included in the introduc tory critical remarks, where it may be considered in proper relation to Howells life and writing. The engraving of William Dean Howells by R...